by Neamat Imam
He was calm. The two militia members stood up. They knew what they were expected to do. They were trained. But he restrained them by looking at them briefly.
‘Go down the road,’ he said, ‘ask a man, any man, young or adult, if he is hungry; give him food, delicious food, give him as much as he can eat, wipe his mouth, leave him to relax, to enjoy a moment of fulfilment, to pray to God in gratitude. Go to him the next moment, the very next moment; ask him again if he is hungry. He is. What did you expect? He is hungry, terribly hungry, for he has not eaten in a month, in three months, he is so poor—though you can see his hands are still yellow, greasy and smelly, and there are bits of food on his teeth. You uncover your bowl, he jumps on the food with both hands, fills his mouth, faster than before because he is now stronger, pushes unbroken chunks of food down his throat forcefully; he eats and eats, as you watch him with wonder, anger, fear and disgust, he eats and eats and eats and eats, until he explodes, himself becoming food for dogs and crows and unnameable insects, making you firmly believe an act of your generosity may bring a lifetime of misery to someone. He will overlook the fact that it was you who fed him a full meal a moment ago. He will overlook it even if he is eating the same food from the same bowl.’
Moina Mia glanced at me sharply. ‘That is the reality here, Khaleque Biswas,’ he said. ‘Desperation is the rule. Desperation guides us in life. Rationale does not.’
Then, he asked, how could I explain the matter of Nur Hussain donating the Mujib coat? He could have donated as many punjabis as he wished. If he thought he had money to waste, he could have bought all the stores in the country and donated their goods to whoever he wished to. But he could not donate a Mujib coat. Giving away a Mujib coat to a destitute to sell in the market insulted the coat and the man behind it. Why hadn’t I recognized, after living with him for so many months, that Nur Hussain actually hated Sheikh Mujib, he hated him badly, though he practised his speech as a means of livelihood?
I remained silent for some time. I had no answer. I was astonished to see how he knew everything. Who else was there on the road that day when Nur Hussain donated the clothes? Was it the old man who received the clothes from him, or the man who bought them from the old man, who had reported the matter to Moina Mia? Were they both undercover Awami League informants?
I remembered that the old man had sold the clothes to his very first customer. I remembered I had considered that a sign of his utter desperation to buy food. Members of his family might have been extremely hungry. At the same time, I also remembered the customer had bought the coat immediately. Why was he ready to buy the clothes at the price the old man had asked for? I had not seen a bargain. There was hardly a conversation. Those two people were connected to each other, I was convinced. They were connected to Moina Mia. Only Nur Hussain did not know he was entering their trap by his simple-minded act of compassion.
‘What’s the use of asking me these questions?’ I asked him. I was getting really upset with him, not only because of what had happened with Nur Hussain, but because he seemed to have prepared himself for some time to accuse me of fraudulence. If he wanted his money back, I said as a last resort, I would give him his money back. Then we would go on our way.
He explained that the money was not the most important part of the matter. Why was I behaving like a beggar or a schoolboy, he asked, who understood neither money nor honour? If it were between us, he said, we could have come to a deal, or sorted things out in a few seconds. Unfortunately, it was not between us, and it was not about us. Though the incident we were dealing with did not involve death or bodily harm, he said, it was one of those incidents that demanded infinitesimal analysis and infallible interpretation.
‘What do you think I should do?’ I asked timidly.
‘Something has happened,’ he said. ‘That something must be solved. It must be solved immediately and clinically, before it becomes the cause of much wider harm.’
19
An Impossible Option
Sending Nur Hussain away to Gangasagar was the only option I could think of. I could take him back to Raihan Talukder and say I was sorry, I could not find employment for him in the capital. He would not be my responsibility any longer. I would come back and begin a new life. I would rent a flat in another city, or in another part of the city, find something to do, or just disappear one day, so that nobody could find me. Not even Moina Mia.
But Gangasagar was a long way from Dhaka. It would not be a pleasant journey if Nur Hussain and I were not on good terms. What would I do if he resisted getting on the bus in the crowded inter-district transport terminal and then screamed for help? Some freedom-fighter-turned-radical-nationalist might go out of control and attack both of us.
I decided to be cordial with Nur Hussain, if that was at all possible. I wanted to remove the distance between us, the distance that had grown in the last few days. I wanted to speak with him again, slowly, to make things clearer to him, to make him understand why what he was doing was taking us in the wrong direction.
He did not give me a chance. He was obsessed, terribly obsessed. He began by chanting Joy Bangla, quickly moved away from it, then spoke his mind. ‘My eyes are open now,’ he said. ‘My heart is sad no more.’ He was sincere. He was like the artists of the underground world who painted those graffiti on city walls. ‘I have made a pledge to myself and nothing,’ he said, ‘not even Sheikh Mujib, has the power to shake it.’
Suddenly he was like God, so arbitrary, yet so passionate. Everything was in his power, huge or trivial. He could make the whole famine-ravaged country disappear with a small blow, and create a beautiful, balanced country in its place, putting a new army of gentle, honest, responsible, charismatic, intelligent and patriotic people there. He spoke, then slept for a while, and then woke up only to speak again.
No, I could not think of taking him anywhere; not even to the local streets, let alone to Gangasagar. I was not as confident as he. He was wiser than I, firmer and better. He was an idealist; pursuing noble principles suited him. His perceptions were sharper than mine, more perfect and deeper and possibly quieter and finer than mine. But this was not the time to consider who was better; it was time to understand who was more practical and better suited to survival over the others. I knew I would not be able to turn back time or heal it. Sheikh Mujib was trying and failing, despite his long and outstanding record. What I could do was pass through life without noise. For that reason I would have to take care of myself. Wasn’t that why we had liberated the country—to understand our priorities and fulfil them, undisturbed, untarnished, as earnestly as possible? Let us face the truth: why should I feel guilty for being alive? Why should I sacrifice my life in order to prove that I am strong? No, I would not accept that either. Life is not supposed to make things complex. It is to unwind things, by giving simple answers to simple questions. Besides, individuals must be more cautious about their lives at moments when governments do not seem to respond sincerely to their needs. A government ought to be sincere to its people—that felt like a distant, unnatural thought to me now. It might happen elsewhere, in countries where people did not need governments, where governing was a spiritual need rather than a political imperative for leaders, but not in our land, not in a hundred years.
I guess he still had some respect left for me, for when I offered him food, he ate silently, and slept or lay down silently in his bed when I went to sleep, and did not flee to Gangasagar when the door was open.
20
The Return of Shah Abdul Karim
The next day when I saw Shah Abdul Karim at our door, I almost cried. Although he had grown extraordinarily thin and old and did not have his bag on his shoulder, I had no problem recognizing him. His tired face broke into a smile as he embraced me.
Immediately I called Nur Hussain to come out of his room to meet our dear visitor. ‘Where are you? Are you listening? See who’s here,’ I said. ‘Isn’t this day a blessing for us?’
He slowly appeared at t
he door, and then ran into Abdul Karim’s wide embrace.
‘Good God,’ he uttered, painfully, in whispers, as though his heart was breaking with joy. ‘God the Generous. My God.’
Shah Abdul Karim was not one to eat a lot, or to be happy to see lots of dishes on the dining table. I had observed that during his last stay. Still I cooked up a storm that evening: rice, chilli fish, chilli eggs, tomato, dal and cucumber salad—an array of food that would have been called inappropriate in those days. Nur Hussain helped me. He chopped onions, turned the eggs over in the pan, washed glasses in warm water before drying them with a kitchen towel. From time to time I looked at him, engaged him by asking if he thought the dal needed more salt, if the chillies were too hot for us. No, he said, they are perfect; and then—no, not that hot, we can digest them. He asked me if he should remove the water from the rice or was I planning to do it myself. ‘Go ahead,’ I answered, ‘please, just be careful.’
He grabbed a chair from his room, and placed it at the kitchen door. ‘This is for you,’ he said to Abdul Karim, and stood holding the back of the chair until Abdul sat on it.
Asking Nur Hussain to serve dinner, I went to the toilet where I washed my face and hands several times. Several times I grabbed the handle of the door to come out but did not. I sat in the corner as my body shook with emotion, something I had not allowed to happen before them in the clear light of the kitchen. I opened my palms before my eyes and found them shaking. My eyes filled with tears; they became heavy and painful. I let a few drops flow down my cheek.
It had been a long time since I had felt such comfort in my heart. It had been a long time since I had cried. I saw people cry standing at burial prayers and when volunteers came with trucks to carry the bodies away. But I did not cry. My eyes were made of sand. No tears could form there. No hardship was hard enough to melt me. But now I cried shamelessly, pressing my mouth with both hands, biting my fingers and the back of my hands. Then I washed my face again and took several deep breaths before leaving the bathroom.
Abdul Karim tasted every item of food at our insistence. Every item was exceptionally delicious. The smell was hugely appetising. The colour was good. Nur Hussain ate more than he usually would. ‘That is fabulous,’ he said about the tomato. ‘Excellent!’ His hunger was awakened. He enjoyed a plate of dal and with relish raised the almost-empty plate to his lips.
As evening fell, we asked Abdul Karim the same questions again and again, as if we were afraid to be alone with ourselves, and he gave us the same answers, but every time with new enthusiasm and sadness. His stories concerned the same topics: starvation, disease, death, burial; then, again, starvation, disease, death, burial. Sometimes starvation was so vivid and penetrating that the human subjects died before moving to the next point in the cycle: disease. They went straight to the phase of death.
He told us about his travels through Narayanganj, Dhamrai, Tongi, Comilla, Chandpur and Mymensingh, where he had stayed quite a few weeks before moving back to Dhaka. A picture of any city could be a picture of all other cities; under the famine all the localities looked the same. He sang in every place, made friends, many of whom he also buried, saw many births and saw the news of the birth turn into news of grief to the parents.
Within the hour he grew sleepy. I thanked him for remembering us, for being our guest again. Nur Hussain made his bed on the sofa. ‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’
He must stay with us, I said to myself as I went to bed. Abdul Karim must stay here at least for a few days to keep us company and give us a sense of purpose, which we appeared to have lost.
I was a much happier man at the end of the day than I had been at its beginning. The mood of the flat had changed, and it had changed forever. I was thankful for that. God bless Abdul Karim, I said; he could not have chosen a better time to come back to us.
Abdul Karim woke up with a fever. I touched his forehead. It was burning. It could be the symptom of a serious illness, I thought. Maybe he had caught something by starving day after day. He needed immediate medical attention. I knew that many diseases started off with a high temperature before escalating into something worse.
But I kept silent. I did not express my concern. I was happy when he said it was nothing, because he had seen worse, and that it would disappear after he had slept for a few more hours. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.
That was his usual reaction, I knew. He did not believe that minor illness or diseases should overtake our mental strength; I remembered this from one of his songs. For a body to be ill, it had to have its mind ill or dead first, the song said, and once the physical illness was recognized there was no use looking for an unadulterated mind or spirituality in a person.
An illness might compel him to reconsider his decision to be on the road immediately, I thought, thus prolonging his stay with us, giving us a chance to heal. It would be good for him to stay, I said to him after breakfast. ‘Most people in the city are suffering from one or more incurable illnesses,’ I added, ‘it won’t be wise to let a simple fever become a more complicated illness by getting something else from them.’ I wanted to stop him from going to a hospital. I explained why hospitals could not be called institutions for health care any more. They were ghostly places where death slept on the floor, on the surgery table, inside the coffins in dark rooms, on the veranda. Death manifested itself in the doctors’ eyes. Doctors prescribed cholera medicines to smallpox patients, typhoid medicines to cholera patients, diabetes medicines to typhoid patients. Sometimes they gave the same round 500 mg yellow tablets to all patients suffering from cholera, smallpox, and typhoid, because that was the only medicine they had. Did he want that kind of treatment? ‘The best solution,’ I stated finally, ‘is to stay indoors, eat well, sleep well, wipe your face with wet cloths, things that one traditionally does for fevers.’
He accepted my suggestions and stayed in bed the whole day and the whole night. Nur Hussain and I cooked barley, carried it to the sofa, fed him spoon by spoon. He moved his head a little when he did not want anything, and pointed at the toilet when he wanted to use it. We carried him on our shoulders, and stood by the door, leaving him inside, before carrying him back to the sofa after a few minutes. We washed his head three times—in the afternoon, evening, and at night—and dried his hair well so that he would not catch cold. We ate together, whispering to each other to eat more, because unfed or insufficiently fed bodies were more prone to illness, and also because we had an ill person in our flat who had walked through many diseased places and crossed many garbage-strewn streets and neighbourhoods before arriving at our door. Then we sat together by Abdul Karim’s side, ready to help him immediately if he needed anything.
I could not remember when our flat had been so quiet. I could not remember when Nur Hussain had spoken his mind so clearly, if ever. He responded to every question, expressed his likes and dislikes, did not leave things for me to decide, and did not prove his existence with only a dull, hateful, unreadable and strenuous silence. I could not remember a moment when he had shown he was capable of showing such extraordinary care. I left him with Abdul Karim because he seemed to suggest he would not go to bed until I did.
By afternoon the next day, Abdul Karim felt better. His temperature fell. The dry skin of his lips became soft again, after a bath in lukewarm water. He walked little by little to the window to look outside, to the kitchen to drink water, to Nur Hussain’s room to start a conversation about simple things like a button, the nail clippers, or a razor, and sat with his guitar to mend the string. He had seen enough, he said, enough for a lifetime; now he was tired. He wanted to return home, get prepared for something new. ‘It is time,’ he said.
Since he was not going to any new places, I asked him if he would consider living with us for some time before moving to his village. Even if it was for a few days, until he felt totally cured. ‘Please,’ I said.
Surprisingly, he agreed. ‘Maybe two weeks,’ he said.
Two weeks? Did he say t
wo weeks? ‘That would be so great,’ I said, ‘wonderful.’ I embraced him and looked at Nur Hussain.
He agreed.
21
Their Obscene Talk
We were now well into the middle of the second week of January 1975. The days were shorter, the nights longer. The sun could not be seen until 10 a.m., a dense cover of fog descended as early as 4 p.m., and then the sun set a little after 4.30 p.m.
Abdul Karim repaired his guitar but did not sing for us, not even once, in the last few days. When we requested a song, he found a way to avoid singing. He would write a good song for us later, a new song, he said, his best, and then sing it. It would take seven days to set it to music, but we wouldn’t forget it in seven years. Then, his throat was not clear; he felt something in his throat even when he spoke. Singing was out of the question. Singing might cause his condition to deteriorate. A singer did not have anything if he did not have his throat under control. Then again, the guitar was not in the best of shape. It had tuning problems. It needed to have its string replaced.
Actually, it was whenever I requested him, not we. Nur Hussain never insisted that he sing for us. Did Abdul Karim not sing because only I wanted to hear him? Who could tell? We all have the most perfect reasons for not doing things on someone else’s schedule.
But on the fifth day after his two-week period had begun, I knew what that perfect reason was. I knew it when I returned from the marketplace, when standing at the door I saw the two men sitting together, the old and the young, the experienced and the naive, the wanderer and the apprentice; when I heard them talking about politics at the top of their voices, about the famine, about the Awami League, the private militia, and finally about Sheikh Mujib. They were not arguing with each other, but complementing each other, filling in each other’s gaps, believing each had a responsibility to make the other feel good about their irritation and frustration.